In the wake of a remarkably disappointing season, Canuck President and General Manager Mike Gillis was unceremoniously dumped today. While presiding over easily the most successful period in franchise history, Gillis finds himself without a job the night after “fire Gillis” chants erupted in Rogers Arena. And while you’d have to think this decision was made long before last night’s spontaneous protest, it served as an exclamation point on Gillis’ remarkable reversal of fortune in this market.

In recent weeks, with the season sliding backwards in an incredible hurry, there seemed to be an obvious power struggle between Gillis and the coach he was apparently forced to hire last summer, John Tortorella. The manner in which Gillis publicly dealt with the recent adversity sealed his fate with the fan base, a significant collective of them now at risk of not renewing their season’s tickets .

At his team’s peak three seasons ago, Gillis was hardly a media darling. Even when times were good, he was overtly condescending and smug.

And when the going got complicated in recent years, his public persona became defensive and evasive. He typically deflected any and all blame for his team’s sudden demise. Where some responsibility taking might have endeared him to the market, we instead received overstated explanations about lock-outs, injuries, player suspensions, collective bargaining agreement amendments, changes to rule enforcement and the “hard to describe” actions of his new fiery head coach. Immune to self-deprecation, Gillis had an excuse for every situation.

Make no mistake, Gillis made mistakes in this market, regardless of his inability to tell you so. And while they were arguably enough to get him fired, it was Gillis’ public demeanour that made him the easy target for a fan base that needed someone to pay for its swift fall from grace.

His most obvious deficiency was his inability to promptly move assets, ensuring a timely return of value and minimizing distraction and disruption to his team. The Roberto Luongo (and Cory Schneider) saga was Exhibit A. With both Ryan Kesler and Alex Edler as pending Exhibit B’s. All too often, when it came to moving core players from his team, he couldn’t separate his notion of their worth from what the market was offering.

His forays into free agency were mixed. The short-lived Mats Sundin experiment was a lucky escape. Mikael Samuelsson was serviceable, as was Manny Malhotra until he lost an eye. Dan Hamhuis was a win. Jason Garrison was not. This year’s signings of Mike Santorelli and Brad Richardson were both low risk pick-ups that yielded notable results. Though the fact is, in today’s NHL, no one successfully builds their team around the free agent market; the best option instead is to develop and retain talent.

And in that regard, Gillis performed reasonably. His successful retention of core players he inherited at under-market rates was the envy of the league and, by far, the biggest factor in the team’s brush with the Stanley Cup three seasons ago. Further, players like Chris Tanev (an off-the-radar undrafted prospect) and Cory Schneider (a top prospect of the previous regime who was patiently cultivated during the Gillis era) were notable development wins.

And while it’s easy fodder to now question the Luongo and most recent Sedin contract extensions, they were moves that were generally applauded at the time in the context of player performance and market standards. Certainly, when it came to the nuance of contract negotiation (as a former player agent, the component of the job he was most familiar with), Gillis performed well.

Critics of Gillis will point to his shoddy trading and drafting record. Though neither of those are really cause for termination in and of themselves.

Clearly, the trades for Keith Ballard and David Booth were failures, less for what they gave away in return, but more in the crippling salary cap commitment the team inherited as a result. But his early acquisition of Christian Ehrhoff was a huge winner. And the jury on the much maligned Cody Hodgson deal should still be out and, in fact, is trending in favour of Gillis – Zack Kassian, at five-on-five, has outscored the one-dimensional Hodgson, who has now found himself relegated to the wing on a last place team while Kassian has emerged as the Canucks’ most entertaining player of the final half of the season.

His trading deadline pick-ups of Chris Higgins and Maxim Lapierre were key components of the near successful 2011 Stanley Cup run, while the subsequent season additions of Sami Pahlsson and Derek Roy were not.

As for drafting, with rare exception, NHL draft day really ought to be called NHL lottery day. It is an easy task to critique pretty much any team’s record. And the Canucks are no exception. And always have been. But when it comes to Gillis, the great majority of his prized picks are simply too young to pass judgement on – Nicklas Jensen, Bo Horvat, Brendan Gaunce, Hunter Shinkaruk, and Frank Corrado still have the potential to be legitimate NHL players. The only top drafted Gillis prospects who can be rightfully judged at this junction are Hodgson, an NHL regular, and Jordan Schroeder, who appears to lack the size and gumption to stick at the NHL level.

There were other notable feathers to the cap of Mike Gillis during his tenure – from his successful in-season management of the salary cap to the acquisition of their exclusive farm team in Utica to the recognition of the team’s sometimes rich history through the ring-of-honour and jersey retirement celebrations.

But tomorrow is season ticket renewal deadline day. And the early returns on renewals are seemingly staggeringly low. Another promise of retooling will not suffice. Nor will another coaching change. The core of this team, who have looked feeble and disinterested many nights in the last couple of seasons, needs to be altered. And clearly, there is little confidence that Gillis is the man for that particular assignment.

And you can expect that the Aquilinis will move in sharp contrast to their hire of Gillis six years ago, who represented an off-the-charts appointment. Instead, there is strong speculation that franchise icon Trevor Linden will be appointed President, no doubt to appease the disgruntled long-time season ticket holders. And that he will hire a proven general manager, something Mike Gillis wasn’t. And in the spirit of ownership’s obsession with short to moderate term profit maximization, don’t be surprised if that person is former Calgary Flames and Tampa Bay Lightning GM (and more notably a strong John Tortorella advocate) Jay Feaster. After all, one $8 million buy-out is plenty for this season…

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